The Failed Fitzgerald Investigation

Lewis Libby has been accused of obstructing justice and lying to a grand jury, which are serious charges regardless of how anyone tries to spin it. But special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald needs to be held to account for the way in which he undertook this investigation.

The whole Ã¢€œPlamegateÃ¢€ fiasco is analogous to a murder investigation in which no one was killed, or a theft investigation where nothing was stolen. IsnÃ¢€™t step one to first ascertain whether the crime in question has actually been committed? It seems that Fitzgerald may have been absent the day they taught legal reasoning in law school.

If IÃ¢€™m correct about Valerie PlameÃ¢€™s status — and all indicators suggest that I am — then this investigation should have taken no longer than a single day. Fitzgerald should have called CIA director George Tenet, asked of PlameÃ¢€™s status, and judged whether it was even possible for anyone to have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. At that point he should have given a statement saying that he cannot investigate a crime which did not happen. Case closed. Instead, Fitzgerald continued for another 22 months, and ended up catching Lewis Libby in a crime akin to giving a false alibi for a murder which never occurred.

Unless and until Fitzgerald explicitly states that the IIPA was violated, his entire investigation should be considered a sham and his charges against Libby a creation of the process, making them rather dubious.

From Comey’s letter to Fitzgerald 12/20/03 assignng the investigation to him:

“…I hereby delegate to you all authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department’s investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee’s identity,…”

The investigation was not limited to the terms of the IIPA. That statute is not even mentioned in the mandate.

From the indictment:

“At all relevant times from January 1, 2002 through July 2003, Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA, and her employment status was classified. Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community.”

If that’s not explicit enough for you…

Didn’t you grasp the significance of his baseball analogy? The deed isn’t at issue with Fitzgerald. The state of mind is. But Libby chose to lie, to get in the way of discerning the truth, so that’s what he’ll pay for.

George Tenet is a Clinton appointee. The CIA botched the evidence, both in its gathering and in its analysis in both the cases of the 9/11 attacks and Iraq’s WMD programs. Bush intended to restructure the CIA, and they didn’t like that.

If Joe Wilson could be so brazenly partisan as to set this whole trap in motion, isn’t it also likely that Tenet wouldn’t lift a finger to stop Fitzgerald’s investigation? Besides, the whole thing got started on a referral from the CIA, so you might rethink Tenet’s answering the question about Plame’s status and the legality of the leak.

When Lewis Libby gets his day in an actual court, and he will, I assure you, the defense attorneys should call Wilson, Plame and Tenet to testify, under oath, about their involvement in this whole mess, Fitzgerald should be fired from the Justice Department and a review of the grand jury and its proceedings should be begun. Also, the CIA and every member of the grand jury should be investigated to determine who was leaking information to Sen. Shumer, the New York Times and every other Democrat who stuck his/her nose into this mess.

While I would not be surprised if the people we depend upon to defend our national security do indeed despise and loathe the Bush administrations (what patriot doesn’t?) and want to see them defeated this is not revelant to the fact that people in the Bush administration destroyed part of our national security infrastructure for political reasons.

Considering that Fitzgerald has prosecuted 60 Republicans, and 2 Democrats, does’nt that explain a bit more about his overzealous motivation? Wilson, the liar and whiner, and obstructionist should have been charged together with his wife, and the so-called insider CIA, who’s only purpose was to undermine, and bring down the Bush Administration.

It could have been settled in one day? Maybe. But if a crime was committed in the course of the investigation on that one day, then the determination as to whether a crime has been committed becomes doubly problematic and the investigation must branch out. That — except for the one day part of it — is what happened at least five times (as I am a mere citizen and not a prosecutor, juror or any other court official, I am free to ignore the presumption of innocence since I shall have no voice in determining whether the guy (Libby and his bosses) is guilty as cjarged. In fact, he did what he’s accused of — lying, obstructing justice. But maybe these are not crimes in his case. A jury can decide on that in less than one day. Ten minutes should be enough. Let’s wait and see. But he’s still guilty in fact if not in law.

unbelievable–Clinton lies about some sexcapades and the righties are all over it. Now we have administration officials who commit TREASON and endanger all of us–deliberately outing a covert agent working in WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION for petty revenge. And the wingnuts just can’t accept that reality so they attack Wilson, Plame, Fitzgerald, the CIA, all Democrats, etc. Pathetic. But it is an interesting case study in trash politics and in human psychology.